Conventionally developed is a driving assistance apparatus providing a function of assisting a drive operation at a time of driving a vehicle such as an automatic brake in accordance with an obstacle detection to achieve a smooth parking. Excepted in the future is that the driving assistance apparatus substitutionally performs all or part of the drive operation of a driver, in anticipation of a complete automatic driving, to reduce a driving load of the driver. It is important in such a driving assistance apparatus to appropriately transmit an intention of the driver to the driving assistance apparatus so that a smooth driving assistance is achieved.
Proposed as one of the functions of the automatic driving is an automatic parking function of automatically parking the vehicle in a parking space. For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a technique of selecting a parking mode based on a steering angle of a steering wheel in a case where a driver selects the parking mode from among a plurality of parking modes in an automatic driving. Patent Document 2 discloses a driving assistance technique of detecting a visual line of a driver to supplement a control of steering angle in a direction intended by the driver.
Also proposed as one of the functions of the automatic driving is an automatic following function of making a vehicle automatically follow a non-subject vehicle.